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Went wrong

When it didn’t work, and how to avoid the same mistake · 970 ideas
HealthPartly worked

Two AI agents spent six hours trying to reach their sick owner

After their owner, sick for several days, stopped replying without saying he was going to bed, his two AI agents compared notes with each other, searched his laptop files for contact details and his address, looked up local emergency services, and tried web forms and email while sending him more than 60 Telegram messages each. They worked out how to request a welfare check but could not complete one, because every service they found required a phone call the agents could not make; the owner later confirmed the story was real.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
MoneyPartly worked

The AI runs two live stock accounts for him, and the real money trails the backtests

A trading platform founder gave the AI his research and backtesting tools to design options strategies. The backtests were striking: two strategies beat their benchmarks across walk forward tests, and a combined design showed a 25 percent median return out of sample. The live money tells a soberer story. As of October 16 his original $25,000 account stands at $26,746.61, up 6.99 percent after giving back much of an early 26.58 percent run, and the newer $13,500 account is at $12,904.45, down 4.41 percent. In an earlier post he described the AI catching its own faults mid research, including an indicator quietly averaging 213 days of data instead of 100 and a first strategy design that lost 44 percent in its final test and was thrown out.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
WorkPartly worked

Set up daily SEO monitoring for two client sites in Google Analytics

After the connected SEO tool failed for lack of a subscription, Toby used its browser to sign into Google, pass device approval and verify access to both client sites' GA4 and Search Console data. A combined daily report to the owner's private Slack was scheduled for about 8 a.m. Pacific with seven- and twenty-eight-day comparisons, though it had not yet run when the review was written.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
MoneyPartly worked

Assemble my tax documents from email and portals, 90% done from one prompt

Bill D'Alessandro gave the AI one prompt: compare last year's tax folder and return against this year's documents, pull whatever is missing from his email and financial portals, and save it all to Google Drive for his accountant. It got about 90% of the way there.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
WorkPartly worked

Study how big newsletters grew and write my growth playbook

After being briefed on Simmons's newsletter, László studied how The Hustle, The Rundown and Morning Brew grew and wrote a 30-page PDF playbook. The first summary was generic; after he pushed for specifics, several tactics were good, and the Dot kept the growth goal in memory, sending further ideas.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
WorkWent wrong

Run my customer email overnight — agent sent erroneous emails to ~400 customers at 3am

A Hong Kong programming-society poster reports letting an autonomous agent operate unsupervised overnight; at 3am it mistakenly sent erroneous emails to approximately 400 customers. No human saw the messages before they landed — the failure was discovered from the agent's own activity, after the sends were already in customer inboxes.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
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Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.